I am sure you followed the instructions of editing the game file so that all the AI are playing at your chosen difficulty level.
I did, but does this adjust the handicap for all players? So it boosts the AIs?
I distributed the game files, I realized that one difference at the higher difficulty level is that the AI starts with more units, such as a free worker
True. I *think* they get a free soldier at Emperor, a free worker at Immortal, and a free Settler at deity? In which case Emperor isn't affected much. But I'm not sure about this, they might get a worker at emperor, which would make a difference.
BT comes out low in the autoplays. Based on your experience so far, might there *multiple* reasons for that? One reason we identified is that the AI always adopts its religion so it may be at a disadvantage for OB and tech trading. Perhaps you could choose another player in the BT PYL, autoplay or really play for a little while, and compare the AI performance as BT against yours from the other game.
I adopted Tleilaxu Zensufism on turn 1, for the culture boost.
I am not convinced that choosing not adopt the religion is really a good thing for the human player to do (I mangaged to become very powerful with very little diplomacy), but if it is, my solution is to make the temples require that the state religion be adopted - force the human player to abandon the exploit.
When testing AI BTl performance in autoplays, a good indicator would be to note on what turn did they build their Shrine. The Shrine is very powerful, and forms a major part of the BTl strategy. If they are late building it, that could explain weakness.
Perhaps you could choose another player in the BT PYL, autoplay or really play for a little while, and compare the AI performance as BT against yours from the other game.
Unfortunately it is a little too late; I am at turn ~400, and so only have autosaves back to ~380 or so, and I am so powerful that even the AI could win from that advantage.
Letting the AI take my place would not really be a test of BTl power or behavior.
Another possible reasonsfor BTl AI weakness:
Poor AI civic management for a specialist economy.
Preferred civic is Theocracy, for fluff reasons. However, this is not necssarily the *best* civic. Its ok - it does provide unlimited priests, who are boosted by the shrine, but Meritocracy is probably more powerful for the BTLs.
The problem is that I *think* the "preferred civic" does multiple things. It:
a) Increases AI likelihood of adopting that civic
b) Gives diplomacy benefits to other factions who have that civic.
c) Makes the AI sometimes demand that you adopt that civic.
If the Tleilaxu are demanding that you adopt a civic, it should be Theocracy from a flavor perspective.
But perhaps this weakens the AI, since they would be better off with Meritocracy/Faufreluches?
Or we could even make them another terraformer; they're hated anyway, so the diplo penalty doesn't hurt as much, and since the Tleilaxu are experimenting with artifical spice, they might not care so much if the spice on Arrakis dries up (it makes their stuff more valuable).
But that isn't great flavor.
We could try two autoplays of the same file with and without theocracy as preferred civic, and see if it makes any difference. I may be able to try testing that this weekend.
It may be true that when you load one of my PYL files, then a second set of spice and arches get added. But is there a case when you would get more than two sets? I don't understand how that could be.
Not from the scenario method, but yes I think if you are repeatedly opening and saving a scenario file in Worldbuilder.
But even twice could be high.
Actually, the amount of spice is maintained to a constant level. So even if you did this, the amount of spice should not increase.
Are you sure? I have been slowly working on the Arrakis map, and IIRC every time I load it within a game more spice is added, to the point where the total amount of spice at game start is quite high. I am not certain though.